The young man looked down, embarrassed. “I don’t have half a guilder. Just this morning a delegation came from the town council to announce a cut in pay for the wagon drivers. The noblemen said they had to do that because there were fewer goods in storage in the Ballenhaus.”
“Oh, what a coincidence,” Magdalena said sarcastically. “No sooner has Lechner left town than the council cuts the pay, another achievement we can surely credit to our venerable Burgomaster Buchner.”
But despite her irony, she knew there had to be something behind the council’s decision. Formerly, dozens of shipments every day had passed through Schongau by highway and the port on the Lech, and trade with Venice and Genoa over the Alps had blossomed, bringing prosperity to the town, but for several decades now, business had moved to the northern part of the Reich, where huge ships departed for the New World and returned with silver, spices, and other treasures. Schongau fell on hard times, as did its many raftsmen and wagon drivers.
“When I look at the owner of your wagons, it appears he’s not affected by the cut in wages,” Stechlin grumbled. “Just this noon, in fact, I saw him sitting fat and happy with Buchner in the Stern Tavern, dining on a roasted goose.”
Lukas Baumgartner nodded. “That’s right—in recent days those two have been seen together often, and the wagon train supervisors seem to be rather well off. In any case, I haven’t heard them complain.” He sighed, but suddenly his face brightened. “I can give you an installment. I’ve been promised a tidy sum next week.”
Stechlin broke out in a dry laugh. “And how are you going to do that? Are you going to attack one of the fat merchants from Augsburg?”
Lukas blushed. “No, no. It’s . . . It’s actually . . . a little side job. I could pay you five kreuzers now . . .”
Magdalena waved him off. “Just forget it, Lukas. Keep the money and buy a cradle instead, and a christening dress for the boy.”
“Really?” The young wagon driver beamed from ear to ear. “That’s very kind of you.”
“You can pay it back when you’re a wagon master yourself,” Magdalena replied with a smile. Then she turned to Martha Stechlin. “Now let’s clean up quickly and get back home. Since my father left for Oberammergau, I’ve left Paul in the care of the knacker. I’m afraid he’s going to really get on the man’s nerves.”
A bit later, the women were standing at the landing down by the river, watching as about a half-dozen men tied down some of the day’s few deliveries onto a raft. The goods were in large barrels that slipped back and forth dangerously on the tree trunks that had been lashed together to form the raft. Magdalena looked up in surprise at the sun, which was already slipping behind the trees. Usually the river rafts departed in the morning or early afternoon in order to arrive on time in Augsburg, the closest large city. Perhaps this shipment had arrived later than expected.
The supervisor, Michael Eibl, stood on the pier, shouting orders. He was a bull-necked man with a smashed-in nose who had never really cared for Magdalena and visited the doctor up in town when he was ill. When Eibl saw the two women, he glared at them.
“What are you two women doing here?” he barked. “Don’t you have anything better to do than to stand around gawking at us?”
“We bring children into the world,” Magdalena replied coolly, “something you men can’t do. Or do you think you could have stopped Frau Baumgartner’s bleeding after childbirth?”
The dock boss seemed about to make some uncouth reply, but then he just waved her off. His eyes flitted nervously from Magdalena to the raft that was bobbing in the waves. He seemed to be in a hurry. Finally he jumped from the pier onto the logs that had been lashed together and picked up the long steering pole. Magdalena was surprised. Were the men really going to push off now?
“Let’s go,” Martha Stechlin grumbled. “I can feel the cold in my bones, and it was a long day. Why should we care what nonsense the men have to say? Half of them I myself helped bring into the world.”
She laughed dryly and looked back at the Lech Gate and the way back to town, but Magdalena kept watching as the raft drifted out into the middle of the river and then slowly disappeared behind the willows.
“You’re right, why should we care about the men,” she mumbled, “as long as we women stick together? I just hope that Barbara hasn’t done something stupid again.”
She couldn’t know that her younger sister had just made the stupidest mistake of her life.
By the light of a candle, Barbara leafed through the pages of a book she was holding in her lap.
She was sitting on the bed in her room, her fingers trembling as her lips silently mouthed the words she was reading. Now and then she stopped and listened to see if Magdalena had returned yet. Her older sister had left around noon to help with a birth and could be back at any moment, but Barbara would surely hear the door closing downstairs and would have enough time to put her secret back in its hiding place.
The secret she was so anxious to keep.
After making sure she could read on undisturbed, she continued—word by word, line by line. For days she’d been worried that Magdalena would learn about her discovery, but the even greater fear was that her older sister would tell Father about it. There had to be a reason why he’d hidden the books in the secret compartment up in the attic.
Barbara had discovered the hiding place when she had been looking for her old slate tablet to give to Peter. The tablet had been way in the back under some old rags and covered with cobwebs. When she finally pulled it out, she spotted a square cut into the wooden wall that looked recent and sounded hollow when she tapped on it. In less than a minute, she discovered how to open it—a simple flap that could be turned. Behind it was a little niche.
Inside there were three books, one of which she was now excitedly holding in her hands.
They were bound in the finest calf’s leather, held together by silver fittings, but otherwise they looked old and worn. The mere title of the book, handwritten in large letters on the cover, made Barbara’s heart pound.
De Maleficiis Ac Magicis Dictis Liber Auctore Georgio Vulgo Jörg Abriel, Carnifici [Book of Magic Potions and Sayings Recorded by Jörg Abriel, Executioner]
In Barbara’s family, Jörg Abriel had always been a sort of legend, an evil spirit that Mother had talked about when the children didn’t want to go to bed or were making mischief.
Quiet down now, or Abriel will come along and chop your heads off like little chicks.
Jörg Abriel was Barbara’s great-grandfather. During the infamous Schongau witch trials years ago he had beheaded and burned more than sixty women, not without torturing them thoroughly beforehand with fire, tongs, the rack, and millstones. That had been nearly a hundred years ago, but still today horror stories circulated about the hangman in his black robe who had traveled through all of Bavaria with his wagon and helpers, looking for witches. Abriel became famous for his needle test, in which needles had been stuck into suspected witches; if they didn’t bleed, they stood convicted.
With Jörg Abriel, no suspect ever bled until later, when they were at the gallows; then they bled profusely. It was said that Abriel could smell a witch’s fear from far off, the odor of sulfur emanating from her body, the devil’s perfume.
And now Barbara was holding one of his legendary books of magic in her hands! Basically, they were records of the interrogations and confessions of the suspected witches. Abriel had kept careful records of every single session, and taken together they read like one great collection of magical sayings.
Excitedly, Barbara turned to the next page, which described, in hastily scribbled sentences, a curse to bring down fist-sized hailstones on the fields and make trees turn black. Other curses could cause calves to grow two heads; make cows stop giving milk and suddenly fall down dead in the field; or bring scourges of caterpillars, mice, and grasshoppers to destroy the crops. Any evil that man could devise was written down in these books.
It was only last year tha
t Magdalena had told Barbara about the magic books. Evidently they were always passed down in the family to the eldest child. Their uncle Bartholomäus, who was now the executioner in Bamberg, had finally revealed the secret to Magdalena.
Jakob had asserted at the time that he’d burned the books, but that was not the case. For all these years they’d been lying in the dusty little niche until Barbara found them just a few weeks ago.
Since then she hadn’t been able to get them out of her mind.
Secretly she’d made inquiries about them and had searched other books among her father’s and the midwife Stechlin’s collections. Those books referred again and again to Jörg Abriel’s books of magic and called them the most valuable books on magic since the Grimorium Verum, as they were based on the executioner’s innumerable tortures, forcibly extracting knowledge from the presumed witches.
How to make a strong man sick and weak.
How to make lightning strike a house.
How to ride on a broom.
How to let the devil into your house disguised as a black dog, kiss him on the anus, and make him your lover.
Much of that was no doubt nonsense, confessions of poor women hoping to make the pain of torture more bearable—but all of it?
Wasn’t it possible that some of these magical incantations really had an effect?
Barbara was ridden with doubt. She felt driven to go back to the books, again and again, to leaf through them. She wished she could ask her father, who surely could tell her more, but the mere attempt, a few days ago, to bring up the matter of her infamous ancestor when she was visiting the retirement house down by the river made her realize the topic was too dangerous. Her father would beat the living daylights out of her if he knew she had the magic books, and even worse, he’d take them away from her.
The question was why he had even kept them at all.
More than once Barbara had toyed with the idea of trying out a few of the curses—to go out to look for the necessary ingredients at the full moon, and to dance and chant just as the magic books prescribed. She knew it was a sin, but perhaps among the chants were some that would make a new life possible for her, that would magically carry her away from this stuffy prison called Schongau, away from the daily cleaning and cooking, the disapproving looks of the townspeople, and also away from her sister, who still treated her like a child.
A pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. A silver coach that will take me to a far-off land. A broom to take me to Nürnberg and back just so the rich people would look up at me in wonder.
Barbara was an inquisitive person, a character trait she shared with all the Kuisls. Perhaps she could start with just a little magic trick—a bolt of lightning hitting an old oak tree, a small thunderstorm, or . . .
She was startled by a knock at the door. Quickly she shoved the books under the bed and walked cautiously over to the top of the stairs. She held her breath—her sister surely wouldn’t knock. Was it the constable again? Were they coming to pick her up for her eavesdropping?
“Who is it?” she asked hesitantly.
“It’s me, Josef Landthaler. I have a stomachache.”
Barbara breathed a sigh of relief. Josef Landthaler was a hard-drinking day laborer who worked down at the docks to make enough for his next trip to the tavern. Barbara couldn’t stand him. He was dirty and shifty, but at least he wasn’t a constable who’d come to pick her up.
“The bathhouse keeper is not here,” she replied. “Come back tomorrow, Josef.”
“But by then my stomach will explode,” he complained. “I just need a little bloodroot.”
“If it’s as bad as all that, for God’s sake go to see Ransmayer,” Barbara said.
“People like us can’t afford the doctor. Please open up, or I’m going to go in my pants right here . . .”
“All right, all right.” She opened the door with a sigh to see a shamefaced, grinning Josef Landthaler standing on the stoop and shifting from one foot to the other, his trousers and shirt wet and dirty from the mud in the river. He was trembling all over and kept rubbing his thin arms; his cheeks were sunken, his face pale, and the few remaining stumps of his teeth as black as tar.
“Well, then come on in,” Barbara said, now in a more friendly voice. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Bowing deeply again and again, Josef Landthaler entered the room. “So kind of you,” he murmured, holding out a tarnished kreuzer. “I can pay, too.”
Barbara waved him off. “Keep your money. I’ll be happy if you just leave again as soon as you can. I’m busy.” She pointed toward the bench by the stove. “Sit down and warm yourself, and I’ll get the bloodroot for you.”
“God bless you,” said Landthaler. Visibly relieved, he took a seat by the warm stove. “Take your time.”
Barbara hurried off into the next room, where Simon and Jakob kept their medicines. Since the house actually still belonged to Jakob, there were a number of tools here used in executions and torture. There were two chests containing ropes, chains, thumbscrews, and pincers, and next to the chests was the gallows ladder. On the opposite wall stood a huge cabinet with three doors, their so-called pharmacy cabinet, even used by Barbara’s grandparents. In it the Kuisls kept books and rolls of parchment, but primarily dried herbs, tinctures, bottles, leather pouches, and vials. It exuded a warm fragrance of summer.
Barbara looked for a while before finding the little drawer containing the ground bloodroot. It always worked best in case of sudden diarrhea. There wasn’t much of it left, but it would be enough for Josef Landthaler. Barbara scraped the remaining bits into a small crucible and returned to the main room.
“Here’s your bloodroot,” she said. “Pour some water in it and . . .” She stopped short, as something in the room didn’t seem quite right to her.
Josef Landthaler was still sitting on the bench by the stove, but Barbara thought she noticed a mischievous grin on his face, and it seemed he’d been sitting closer to the wall before, where the wet coats were hung up to dry. But perhaps she was mistaken.
“Is there something wrong?” she asked cautiously.
Josef Landthaler put on an innocent face. “What could be wrong?” He took the crucible from her. Suddenly he seemed to be in a big hurry. “So thanks then very much, but I’ve got to return to the dock. We’re expecting another shipment from Augsburg today.”
He hurried to the door and it seemed to Barbara that he was already looking much better.
Without the medicine.
With a final bow, the worker said goodbye and ran through the garden down to the Lech. Just before he disappeared behind the hedges, Barbara thought she heard a malicious giggle.
She closed the door somewhat uncertainly and went up to her room again. She had suddenly lost interest in the magic books, so she pushed them behind the chamber pot under the bed, where Magdalena certainly wouldn’t find them. Then she went into the barn to feed the chickens, the draft horse for the knacker’s cart, and the milk cow, which was starting to moo restlessly.
If Barbara had looked around the room a bit more carefully, perhaps she would have noticed that the chest was now standing a bit farther to the right, as if someone had quickly moved it.
But by now she had already forgotten Landthaler’s visit.
6
AMMER RIVER VALLEY, THE EVENING OF MAY 6, AD 1670
IN THE LIGHT OF THE setting sun, the wagon driver Urban Gabler stomped through the marshland between Oberammergau and Ettal Monastery. The last rays surrounded the mountain peaks, bestowing on them a golden wreath that got smaller and smaller until it disappeared and dark shadows crept across the valley.
A slight breeze came up, and Gabler had to hold on to his hat so it wouldn’t blow away. Lost in his thoughts, he marched past birch trees, heather, and low bushes whose vague outlines looked like dwarfs and trolls cowering on the ground. Occasionally, pools of black water appeared in his path, which he bypassed in a wide circle. Many an unwary traveler had been pulle
d to a watery grave in the mossy ground. Urban had known the region since his childhood but didn’t want to take any unnecessary risks.
He’d decided against taking the highway but followed the narrow footpath through the moor, as he didn’t want to be seen. There were some people in Oberammergau who would strongly disapprove of his mission that day. But Urban Gabler could no longer remain silent. What he knew was something that had to be said.
He was on his way to see the abbot of Ettal Monastery.
For a long time he’d been plagued by a bad conscience, but again and again he’d put it out of his mind. The crucifixion of Dominik Faistenmantel had opened his eyes, however. They were guilty, and now God had sent them their just punishment. Urban Gabler was a man who had been slow to realize the errors of his ways, but now the fire was burning all the brighter within him for that. It made perfect sense that he played the part of the apostle Thomas in the Oberammergau Passion play—the former doubter who had later proclaimed the Good News as far away as distant India. Gabler knew that everything on earth was a sign from heaven, and what greater heavenly sign could there be than a crucifixion?
He prayed silently as he moved through the mountain pines and hawthorn bushes. Truly, this village had been cursed for years. Envy and ill will had been constantly increasing, especially between the longtime residents and the newcomers. In past years the citizens had always come together again at the time of the performance, but now Konrad Faistenmantel ruled the village like a king and had advanced the schedule—and those times were past. The brawl in the cemetery had settled the matter for Gabler. Once and for all there had to be an end to this blasphemous behavior.
And then there had been the strange carved figurine.
Last night it had suddenly appeared on his windowsill like a present, or rather a curse. The Latin words ET TU were scratched on the bottom of it. Gabler had thought long and hard about who might have put the figurine there. Was it perhaps just a stupid coincidence? By now he’d become convinced it was another sign from God. You, too, my son . . .